A libertarian leaning, common preference seeking, pro-science, pro-critical rationalism, humanist blog, which is mainly, but by no means exclusively, about home educating in the UK.

Monday, April 24, 2006

Parental Responsibility for Education

The introduction of a minimum two day delay in de-registration from school, (whilst the school authorities inform the LEAs about the de-registration) would appear to raise the issue of who is actually responsible for the education of children. Given that during that minimum two day delay, parents in effect cannot enact their desire to educate their child in a place of their choice, they can hardly be deemed to be being held responsible for the education of their children during this time.

(This predicament is, of course, entirely different from the situation where parents delegate responsibility for education to a school, since it is clear that in the act of delegation, parents retain ultimate responsibility).

The question therefore arises: "If a parent is temporarily not responsible for the education of the child, does this compromise the principle of parental responsibility as it is generally applied?" My instinctive reaction is "yes," for the reason that this negation of parental power is not chosen by the parents themselves. This therefore establishes a precedent by which the state appears to have a right to remove parental responsibility at any point they so choose (without specific good cause, since home education is equal in statute to education in schools), which in effect means that genuine parental responsibility becomes a chimera.

So right: if the state wants to take on responsibility for the education of my child, I personally will start suing their butts off as soon as they start to interfere, if for no other reason than I feel they are giving my child a bad lesson in how to be a bully boy.